Increase Allen Lapham, First Scholar of Wisconsin

by Milo M. Quaifefrom Wisconsin Magazine of History 1917

The most characteristic and comprehensive theme in all American
history is that of the westward movement. From the time of the
first feeble landings at Quebec, at Plymouth, and at Jamestown,
the history of our country has been characterized by a steady
westward surge of the population, reaching out eagerly for new
lands to conquer, and in the process carrying the banner of civilization
ever westward and establishing successive new communities and
states. The present generation of students of American history
has not been unmindful of the importance and interest which attaches
to this westward movement, and has not failed to accord it, in
the main, all due recognition. With the doings and deserts of
our pioneer farm, canal, railroad, and city builders, our hewers
of wood and drawers of water, in a word, historians have long
made us familiar. Unfortunately, however, too little attention
has been given and too little recognition accorded, the equally
important service of those among our western pioneers who laid
the foundations of our spiritual and intellectual civilization.
That man may not live by bread alone was stated long ago on excellent
authority. The hewing down of the forests and breaking of the
prairies, the building of houses, highways, and cities were all
essential steps in the process of transforming the wilderness
into an abode of enlightened civilization. Equally essential was
the establishment of institutions of learning and religion, and
the development of a taste for literature and art. The blossoming
of these finer fruits of civilization inevitably tended to sweeten
and refine the society of the pioneers, which otherwise, engrossed
in a stern physical struggle with the wilderness, must have become
hard and gross in character.

Fortunate indeed is the pioneer community which numbers among
its settlers intellectual and spiritual leaders fired with enthusiasm
and endowed with ability. Fortunate it was for Wisconsin when
in the very year of her birth as a territory, Increase Allen Lapham
cast his lot for the remainder of his life with her. The service
rendered by the intellectual aristocracy of pioneer Massachusetts
and the other New England colonies has long been accorded ample
recognition. The valiant labors of Increase Lapham in the service
of the state of his adoption have largely gone unheeded and unrewarded
to the present moment. Yet it is safe to predict that when the
future historian shall come to scan the record of the first half
century of Wisconsin's history as a territory and state, he will
affirm that no man brought greater honor to her or performed more
valuable services in her behalf than did the modest scholar,
Increase Allen Lapham.

The frontier has ever been proud of its self-made men, esteeming
chiefly, not who a man might be but rather what he was able to
do. Lapham was a true frontiersman in this respect at least, that
he was a wholly self-made scholar. He was born in March, 1811,
at Palmyra, New York, "two miles west of the Macedon locks on
the Erie Canal." His father, Seneca Lapham, was an engineering
contractor, the pursuit of whose profession necessitated frequent
family removals. Thus, in 1818 the family was located at
Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where the father was employed on the Schuylkill
Canal; two years later he was back on the Erie Canal and the family
was residing for a second time at Galen,
New York; the next few years witnessed further removals
to Rochester and Lockport in New York, and to
several points in Ohio.

The boy, Increase Lapham, was evidently a precocious youth. At
thirteen years of age he "found frequent sale" for his drawings
of the plan of the locks his father had assisted in constructing
at Lockport. About this time he gained employment, first at cutting
stone for the locks and then as rodman on the canal. While engaged
in stonecutting, he wrote in later years, "I found my first fossils
and began my collection. The beautiful specimens I found in the
deep rock cut at this place gave me my first ideas of mineralogy
and initiated a habit of observation which has continued through
all my life. I found amusement and pastime in the study of nature,
leading to long walks in the country, and as I found no others
of similar tastes these rambles were usually without companions."

When fifteen years of age the youth followed his father to Ohio
where he worked for a short time on the Miami Canal, removing
at the close of the year, 1826, to undertake similar employment
at Louisville. At this time, apparently, he first attracted the
attention of members of the world of scholarship, for we find
the renowned scientist, Professor Silliman of Yale, writing to
thank him "for the liberal spirit which you manifest in encouraging
a work designed to promote the public good"--the work in question
being the American Journal of Science, of which Silliman
was the founder and editor. Within a few months
the boy made his first contribution to scholarship by sending
to Silliman, for publication in the American Journal of Science, a
comprehensive description of the canal around the Ohio Rapids.

At this time he was only sixteen, and his opportunities for schooling
had been exceedingly scant. Yet his habits of observation and
his powers of reasoning and of expressing himself in clear and
convincing English might well be coveted by the average college
undergraduate of today. A convenient illustration of these powers
is afforded by Lapham's journal entry for October 29, 1827:

A smoky day. Mr. Henry, the engineer [of the canal], is of the
opinion that the smoke occasioning our Indian summer, as the smoky
weather is called, does not originate in the burning prairies
in the West, or in other extensive fires; but that it is from
the decay of vegetation. (If it is possible for vegetables to
be converted into smoke without combustion this will appear very
probable!!!!)

He relates an instance of a very smoky day at New Madrid being
followed by an earthquake; this he supposed to be the smoke that
had arisen through the ground. I told him that I supposed it was
owing to a peculiar state of the atmosphere which was unfavorable
to the decomposition of smoke; to this he made no reply.

The years of Lapham's youth and early manhood from 1827-36 must be
passed in rapid review. Two years in all were spent on canal work at
Louisville; over three more followed at Portsmouth, Ohio;
in April, 1833, the Ohio State Board of Canal Commissioners installed
the young engineer (now twenty-two years of age) as its secretary
at an annual salary of $400. Thereafter for three years his headquarters
were in the state capitol at Columbus, his work being that of secretary
of the canal commission. Meanwhile the elder Lapham,
advised and financially assisted by his sons, Darius and Increase,
had abandoned the calling of canal contractor and settled upon
a farm near Mount Tabor. This became the permanent family home,
and here Seneca Lapham acquired a well-deserved repute among his
fellows both for his sobriety of character and for his progressive
ideas and practices with respect to farming operations. In the
years under review Increase Lapham continued to pursue with enthusiasm
his scientific studies and investigations, the range of his interests
and observations widening with every passing year. Relations of
acquaintance and friendship were established with a large number
of scientific investigators, all of them, doubtless, much older
than was Lapham himself. The study of botany and zoology, and
investigations with respect to more scientific methods of farming
were begun. In a communication on "Agriculture in Ohio,"
contributed to the Genesee Farmer in 1833, the modern
doctrine with respect to rotation of crops
and scientific renovation of the soil through the use of fertilizers
was laid down. A third of a century later, but still over a third
of a century in advance of the recent movement for the conservation
of the natural resources of the country,
Lapham followed up this
general line of thought by writing and publishing as a Wisconsin
legislative document a comprehensive argument in favor of the
conservation of the state's forest resources. Happy had it been
for both state and nation if heed had been given in time to the
vital problem to which he thus early called attention.

To a practical application of the Jacksonian theory of spoils
politics was due the migration of Lapham from the capital of Ohio
to the new-born town of Milwaukee in the spring of 1836. In later
years he humorously explained that he was "reformed" out of office
and employment in Ohio; at the time, there is reason to believe,
the blow was not considered in a humorous light. Early in his
canal career Lapham had worked under Byron Kilbourn, who now
had thrown in his fortunes with the rising young village of Milwaukee.
As a leading promoter of the coming metropolis Kilbourn had extensive
business projects in view, among them that of procuring the construction
of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal, which would, it was fondly
believed, go far toward realizing for the nascent city her dreams
of metropolitan greatness. There was much demand for men possessed
of engineering ability, and Kilbourn, who had conceived a friendship for Lapham
which was to prove lifelong, now brought him to Wisconsin
on a salary of $1,000 a year. Thus Wisconsin became his permanent
home, for he left Milwaukee only to
remove in old age to a farm near Oconomowoc.

At the mouth of the Milwaukee River Lapham found, on his arrival
on July 3, 1836, fifty homes where a few months before had been
but two or three. In coming from the older settled portion of
Ohio to Milwaukee he had entered a new world.
Chicago was still in the height of its first mad speculative
boom and conditions at Milwaukee differed only in detail
from those which prevailed at Chicago. Indeed, on reaching Detroit on his
westward journey, Lapham wrote to his brother: "I am now, and
have been since I arrived at Sandusky, in what might very properly be called the
world of speculators: everybody you meet is engaged in some speculation;
everything you hear has some speculation at the bottom. The hotel
where I am now writing has suspended on the walls of the barroom
plats of new towns; I have added the ninth." No wonder the impecunious
young man, engulfed in such an atmosphere, proceeded, immediately
upon his arrival at Milwaukee, to purchase three town lots for $5,000,
payable "one-half in one one-half in two years." How did
he expect to provide the money to meet this obligation? He did
not expect to provide it; he "bought them for the purpose of selling
them again at a higher price."

Lapham, however, was never designed for a business man, and he never acquired
more than a very modest competence in life. I have
spoken of the speculative mania which then pervaded all the newer
West merely to illustrate the sincerity of the young immigrant's
devotion to scholarship, from the pursuit of which even the thrill
and intoxication of perhaps the greatest boom the country has
ever witnessed could detain him only momentarily. Within two weeks
of his arrival at Milwaukee he records that he has made a map
of the county (possibly a professional matter) and "done a little
botanizing." Even earlier, while at Detroit en route to the West,
he had taken time to write Professor Asa Gray an offer to
collect for him specimens from the new region to which the
writer was going. "Let me entreat you to pay particular
attention to my pets, the grasses,"
wrote the noted botanist in reply; "I will see that you have
due credit for every interesting discovery. Six weeks after his
arrival at Milwaukee Lapham wrote to another botanical
friend that he found many new plants at Milwaukee; and that "in
order to inform my friends of what plants are found here and to
enable them to indicate such as they want I think of publishing
a catalogue of such as I find."

Thus was conceived the idea responsible for the first publication
of a scientific character within the bounds of the present state
of Wisconsin, for before the close of the year there issued from
the office of Milwaukee's newly founded newspaper a
Catalogue of Plants and Shells, Found in the vicinity of
Milwaukee, on the West Side of Lake Michigan, by
I. A. Lapham. It would probably be safe to affirm that this
was the first scientific work to be published west of the Great
Lakes, at least to the north of St. Louis. For in literary matters
Chicago, whose commercial progress Milwaukee never succeeded in
equalling, must yield the palm of leadership to her early North
Shore rival. Leaving out of consideration one or two lyceum lectures
which were printed after delivery, the earliest Chicago imprint
of a scholarly character of which I have any knowledge is Mrs.
Kinzie's well-known story of the Chicago massacre, published as
a pamphlet in 1849; and this, a reminiscent family narrative,
does not deserve to be regarded as scholarly in the true sense
of the term.

In 1838, two years after his arrival,
Lapham began the collection of material for a gazeteer of Wisconsin.
Published at Milwaukee in 1844, it constitutes
both Wisconsin's first book of history and the state's first
home-made book of any character to be published in more durable
binding than paper. So attractive were its merits that an
unscrupulous rival author, Donald
McLeod, more adept at wielding the scissors than the
pen, promptly and brazenly plagiarized a large portion of its
contents for his History of Wiskonsan, published,
appropriately enough, by "Steele's Press" at Buffalo,
in 1886; and a copy of this fraudulent publication was recently
offered for sale by a dealer, with due encomiums upon its rarity
and worth, for the modest sum of thirty dollars.

Thus far we have followed Lapham's career in due chronological
order. Some thirty years were yet to elapse before his death in
1875, years crowded with earnest, self-effacing labors in the
cause of scholarship. In what follows I shall treat of his various
scholarly interests and achievements in topical order, without
regard to chronology.

Although himself self-taught Lapham's active interest in educational
institutions persisted throughout his life. In 1843 he secured
the adoption by the territorial legislature of a resolution to
Congress petitioning a grant of land for the purpose of establishing
in Wisconsin an institution for the instruction of the deaf and
dumb, and blind, and an asylum for the insane. He is the real
father of the Milwaukee public high school system. In 1846 he
donated thirteen acres of land lying within the city limits for
the purpose of establishing the first high school. In the spring
of 1848 he was commissioned by the city as its agent to secure
a loan of $16,000 in the East for the building of schoolhouses,
and he made the long trip to New York and Boston on this public
mission. In the same year he proffered the newly authorized University
of Wisconsin the gift of "a pretty extensive herbarium" of 1,000
or 1,500 species of plants. In March, 1848, by a meeting of citizens
held at the council house "it was deemed expedient to establish
a college in this city" and an executive committee of five townsmen
was appointed with full power to consummate the desired object.
Lapham was one of the five men charged with this weighty responsibility,
and out of this movement proceeded the "Milwaukee Female Seminary"
which today is represented by the Milwaukee-Downer College, one
of the state's noble institutions of higher learning. In August,
1850, as president of the executive board of the college,
Lapham had the satisfaction of delivering to its first two graduates
their diplomas. When, in later years, he was offered a professorship
in the school he declined the position, modestly explaining that
his lack of education and of teaching experience rendered him
unfit to discharge the trust.

With our own State Historical Society his connection was long
and honorable. Before coming to Wisconsin he had actively engaged
in the work of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society.
He hailed with joy the formation of the State Historical Society
of Wisconsin in 1849 and was one of the committee of three which
drafted its first constitution. The society being formally organized,
he at once began to labor to promote its collections. He served
as its vice-president for twelve years, and as president for ten
additional years. With the Smithsonian Institution he established
relations of mutual helpfulness almost immediately upon its organization.
Of his relations with this and other learned institutions more
will be said in connection with certain lines of investigation
which he carried on.

In 1849 Dr. Lapham proposed to the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester,
Massachusetts, to make an extensive survey of the
mounds and other ancient remains in Wisconsin provided the society
would defray the actual outlay of money involved. The enterprise
thus proposed was adopted by the Antiquarian Society, as a result
of which the survey was made, the fruits of it being given to
the scientific world a few years later in Lapham's Antiquities
of Wisconsin. This work, published under the auspices of the
Smithsonian Institution, is filled with the author's drawings, beautifully executed, of
the numerous earthworks and mounds he had located. Students of
American archeology will always owe the patient author a heavy
debt of gratitude for having carefully plotted and described these
evidences of aboriginal habitation in Wisconsin before the work
of destruction which inevitably attended the advance of white
settlement had gained much headway.

Thus in many departments of learning--in geology, botany, conchology,
in meteorology, history, and archeology--Lapham busied himself,
acquiring repute among the scholars of Europe as in America, all
the while earning his simple living by such professional work
as he permitted himself the time to do. Perhaps no single achievement
of his possesses more of interest to the world in general or has
directly added more to the well-being and comfort of every one
of us than his work in securing the establishment of a weather-service
bureau by the national government. It cannot be claimed that he
fathered the idea of such a service and its attendant possibility
of foretelling weather conditions far enough in advance to make
the information of real commercial value. Neither can
Robert Fulton be credited with having fathered the idea of
the steamboat. Yet we rightly regard Fulton as its real inventor, since
he was the first to demonstrate the practicability of the idea. So with Lapham
and the weather bureau. For twenty years he urged upon the Smithsonian
Institution, the Wisconsin legislature, and other agencies of
society the practicability and the immense advantage of such a
government service. For twenty years, as a private individual
he made records and observations, seeking to demonstrate his claims.
But in the nature of the case (as Lapham repeatedly pointed out)
only some powerful agency like the national government could take
the many observations at different points necessary to the success
of the work, assemble their results, and make them known throughout
the nation in time to be of practical use to the public. Finally,
the persistent seeker after the public good succeeded in attracting
the notice of men powerful enough to compel the attention of Congress.
As a result the law for the incorporation of the signal service
was passed. How the result was achieved by Lapham may best be
told in the words of a man to whom he had appealed for assistance.
At the meeting of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, held
in New York in April, 1875, a resolution to appoint a special
committee to correspond with the United States Signal Service
Department in relation to wind as an element in fire risks was
under consideration when Hon. E. D. Holton rose and said:

There is a little man who lives in my town about so high (holding
his hand a little lower than his shoulders) who lives in an obscure
part of the town, and is known to comparatively few people in
the town. You go to his house and find it filled with all the
evidences of science, specimens from the vegetable world and the
mineral world. Going to London a few years ago I was given by
this little man a letter of introduction to Sir William Hooker,
custodian of the Kew Gardens, which secured for me eminent entertainment
and influence. Five years ago as I was about to leave my house
to go to Richmond, Virginia, to attend a meeting of the National
Board of Trade, he came to my house and had a resolution drawn
to be submitted to the National Board of Trade, declaring that
the national government should organize a service to
look after the winds of the continent of America.

When I came to Richmond
I presented that resolution. It received a most eloquent second
from the late General Wolbridge, an eminent citizen of New York. The
National Board of Trade immediately passed the resolution. As
soon as it was passed I sent it to my friend, General
Paine, then member of Congress from my district in Wisconsin,
and in an incredibly short space of time for that august body--which
is supposed to have at least as much red tape as the National
Insurance Company--it was passed. I did not expect that the wind
question would meet me at this angle of the insurance trade, but
it seems it has.

That gentleman I will name. I rise to make these
remarks and I wish to speak his name in this connection,
because out of his labors so persistent, in his humble house,
so unknown to his countrymen--for
he is better known in foreign circles of science than in his own
country--and through his labors and instrumentality, this thing
has been brought into its present shape. His name is Dr.
Increase Allen Lapham of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

And how, it may be asked, did Lapham's
fellow-men requite his lifelong labors devoted to the public good?
The answer which must be made affords much support to the
proverbial belief in the ungratefulness
of republics. When in 1870 Congress passed the bill providing
for the weather-signal service, its execution was entrusted to
the chief signal officer of the army. By him Lapham was employed
for a short time as special assistant in the War Department at
a yearly salary of $2,000. When he sent home (he was stationed
at Chicago) to his daughter the proceeds of his first month's
wages, she wrote to her brother as follows:

Last Friday father sent home $128.05 to be deposited as the first
money of any amount he ever received for any scientific occupation
(regular salary at least) and Thursday afternoon I was down town
and met B. He said he had been around among some of father's friends
and collected $100 to make father a life member of the Chicago
Astronomical Society--(You know this society owns the "big telescope"
at Dearborn Observatory).

I forbear to quote the daughter's delighted remarks which follow;
more profitable will it be for us to consider for a moment the
bitter irony of this situation. After more than forty years of
zealous public service to receive so pitiful a salary, his first
tangible reward, and to have this discontinued within a few months
time! To be fitted both by inherent tastes and lifelong training
to enjoy and profit by membership in such an association, and
yet unable, because our countrymen estimate the services of scholars
so low, to pay the paltry membership fee! Here, indeed, is the
cross on which in the United States today we crucify scholarship.

One other matter and I shall conclude. Before he left Ohio Dr.
Lapham had labored to induce the legislature to make provision
for a geological survey of that state. From the time of his arrival
in Wisconsin he strove as an individual to carry out such a survey
here. Necessarily in order to do it thoroughly and to publish
its results the power of the state must be brought into play.
At length in 1873 provision was made by statute for a geological
survey of Wisconsin and Governor Washburn appointed Dr. Lapham
chief geologist to have the direction of the enterprise. The work
was pushed vigorously and efficiently throughout the seasons of
1873 and 1874. Suddenly, in January, 1875, Governor
Taylor removed Dr. Lapham in order to make a place for
one of his spoils-seeking supporters. According to the American
Journal of Science the new geologist's "sole
recommendation for the position was
political services, no one having ever heard of him before as
acquainted with geology or any other science." Thus finally did
our state requite its first scholar--first certainly from the
viewpoint of chronology, and probably first from every other viewpoint.
"Knowing that time, which cures all things," wrote the three assistant
geologists he had chosen two years before, "will do you ample
justice, and feeling most strongly the irreparable loss that the
state has sustained in the disseverment of your connection with
the survey, we remain with the most sincere respect, Your obedient
servants." As an indication of the quality of the assistants
selected by Dr. Lapham it may be noted
that one of the men who thus testified this appreciation of their
deposed chief was Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin,
who has been for many years chief geologist of the University
of Chicago.

Time indeed cures all things, notwithstanding that the mills of
the gods grind slowly. Of Dr. Lapham's spoilsman successor as
chief geologist of Wisconsin, it may still be said, as at the
time of his appointment, that his reputation as a scientist yet
remains to be made. Governor Taylor, who made the removal, sleeps
in silent Forest Hill within sight of the capitol where formerly
he ruled a state; while in the holy of holies of the beautiful
new state capitol, the governor's reception chamber, in the midst
of famous soldiers, explorers, and legislators, an eminent artist
has chosen to depict the application of scientific knowledge to
the benefit of mankind in the person of Doctor Lapham seated at
his desk, before him an open manuscript, and on the wall nearby,
supported by two children typifying the winds, his map of the
United States, showing the first storm traced across the country.
More recently still, prompted by the urging of citizens of the
locality, the federal government has given to the highest eminence
in Waukesha County, overlooking the beautiful lake region which
Dr. Lapham so loved in life, the name of Lapham Peak. Time is
slowly proving his worth. More fitting memorials than these he
could not have asked.